


Why Do We Fall

by pen_rabbit



Series: Rise [1]
Category: Dark Knight Rises (2012), Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, And then everything changes, Back to the beginning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-01
Updated: 2012-09-01
Packaged: 2017-11-13 07:34:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/501026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pen_rabbit/pseuds/pen_rabbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Dark Knight Rises: an Inception origins story.</p>
<p>
  <i>They call him Smallest at first, because that's what he is.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Why Do We Fall

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by the thought, _if things were different, could Talia grow up to be Mal?_ It rapidly took over my entire brain, spiralled out of control, and is still growing apace. Further parts to come.
> 
> Worlds of gratitude to my amazing beta omletlove, and to my cheerleaders viennajones and dayari. This story would never have been written without them. <3

They call him Smallest at first, because that’s what he is. He hates it. But they won’t call him anything else, no matter how many times he tells them his real name. Names must be earned, they tell him, and he has no right to expect anything else. Down here, nothing comes for free.

Down here he is the smallest, and that comes with both a title and a set of consequences. He learns quickly to be fastest, too, learns to melt into the shadows, learns to hate the sun. The only way to be safe is to hide. If they cannot see him, they cannot catch him.

He learns very quickly not to let them catch him.

The shadows are his sanctuary. The pit is deeper than anyone above would imagine, dark tunnels stretching fingers into the barren earth. There is water down there, but no light. That’s fine. He doesn’t need the light any more. Darkness is his refuge, his protector, his only friend. It keeps him safe as he teaches himself how to survive. And when the sun sets, and everything is dark, he can move through the shadows with silent feet and swift fingers, and he can pilfer enough to last him until the next night. Light is unnecessary now. The sun is blinding.

But still, he hides in the shadows to watch the men who attempt the climb. One day, he promises himself. One day, he will do it. When he is a man grown, he will escape.

Until then, he will keep to himself, and so he will keep himself. He may be small, but he knows enough to know this danger, to be afraid of losing track of everything he knows to be true. If he cannot remember who he is, he will be lost. Because if what he knows about himself changes, how does he stay the same?

These are the things he knows: he has a name that is not ‘Smallest’. He should not be here. The taste of his own blood may be familiar now, but it still feels like bitter failure leaking over his tongue. He is angry. He is so angry that it burns deep in his bones, so deep that he knows the fire will never, ever go out. He is afraid. He hides the fear under the anger, and it makes the flames burn brighter. Anger is good. He takes it, and channels it, and teaches himself to fight with vicious fury. He hits walls, kicks rocks, forces himself to push hard, harder, and harder again. He may be small now, but one day he will be stronger.

He steals a small blade and teaches himself how to use it.

He has many unwitting teachers. The other prisoners fight, kill, and die, and he watches, and learns. Violence is as easy as breathing down here. Death is as close as the shadows. The strongest claim positions in the sun, only to have them stolen as soon as they sleep too deeply. The blood of the weak trickles down the gutters and runs back into the darkness. Men kill each other for the privilege of standing in the rain.

The only unity is the climb.

He sees many, many men climb and then fall. They climb, they fall, and they give up hope. They grow old, and they sit, and they kill, and they watch, and they wait to die. He promises himself he will never be like the old men, tired and resigned and still hanging on to that poisonous, empty hope. He is young (too young, a voice in his head screams, it’s not his fault, it isn’t fair, it isn’t _fair_ -) enough to weather this storm. He will not lose himself. He will not fade. He will not let apathy destroy him.

He takes his memories of the sky, of the wide open spaces, of all the beautiful things in the world, and casts them onto the canvas of his mind, painted in the indelible colour of memory and tucked away for safe-keeping. Every so often, he will take one out and stare at it for hours, his mind’s eye drinking in every detail he can remember, trying to hold it, trying not to forget. He will remember. He will keep his memories safe. He must be patient, and careful, and one day he will be free. Until then, he will watch the other prisoners and learn everything he can from their fights, their deaths, their falls. And _one day -_

Time passes. He grows. He steals. He watches. He waits.

One evening, like many before, the older men gather around a fire. They are a kind of elite, down here, the ones with knowledge. Knowledge cannot be stolen. He creeps cautiously around the edge of their circle, careful to keep his distance, but he can hear that they are telling stories. If he hides close, keeps still, maybe he can listen… 

“Smallest.” One of them turns to look at him. “Join us.”

He creeps forward, one hand on his knife, cautious, but curious too. “Why?”

The old man pulls his face into what might, in a different place, have been a smile. “You are new. You will have stories that we have not heard before.”

Once upon a time, his mother told him stories. “What will you give me for them?”

“Why should we give you anything? What worth do words have?”

They are all staring at him now. He swallows. “If you want them, they have value.” As he says it, he knows it is true. He can see the hunger in their eyes. They have been here too long. They have forgotten. He is new. He remembers.

“What would you have us trade?” Another man speaks this time, displeasure in the line of his brows. “Food? Drugs? Will you steal it, if we will not give it?”

“I will trade words for words. Teach me, and I will tell you my stories.”

Their faces do not change, but he can feel their approval. He settles into the newly-empty space in the circle, takes a deep breath, and begins.

_Once upon a time._

He tells tales to buy their words, learns every language the pit has to offer and then everything else they will teach him as well, and makes up new stories when he runs out until he can’t remember which are true and which he created. Not that it makes any difference anymore, anyway. Memories of the surface are distant now, things he knows intellectually, no longer emotional and close.

Everything they teach him he squirrels away for when he escapes. He prepares for the climb.

He is Storyteller now, instead of Smallest. It’s still true, though, even if he is growing bigger every day. He’s always hungry. For food, for knowledge, and for freedom.

And one day, no different to any of the hundreds of others that have come before it, he tries the climb.

He falls.

He climbs again. He falls again. He tastes the failure of blood in his mouth.

They start calling him Fool, mocking as he fails, falls, again and again. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t remember what his old name was, anyway. He thinks he should probably care more about that than he does.

Everything is fading. Everything except the anger. All his touchstones, all the things he thought he knew about himself: they are all lies, or they might be. He doesn’t know any more.

He liked chocolate, once. He loved his mother. He loved the sea. But there is no chocolate, and no mother, and he thinks he might have imagined the sea. These things have become empty words, mere sounds with no meaning, no reason to exist. He is a man with no meaning, except for anger and poisoned hope.

He climbs. He falls. He has no one to blame except himself. It is his own fault he is still here. If he were stronger, he would escape. It is his fault. He has failed the only promise that ever mattered. He has no goal now, and nothing to hope for but death.

He stops trying to climb, tries to forget the world outside the pit ever existed, tries to forget he ever knew the bitter taste of impossible hope even as it burns like an ember in his chest. He has lost what he promised himself he would keep, and now he doesn’t even remember what it was. It probably wasn’t important, anyway.

Everything has already faded. There is nothing left.

And then one day there is a woman. He stays away. And then there is a child, and he is not the smallest any more. He wishes he still was.

 

+++

 

When Robin is young, he is happy. He has his mother and his father, and while they don’t have much else, what they have is enough for him. Sometimes he is hungry, and sometimes he is cold, but he snuggles into bed between them, wrapped in their arms, and he doesn’t need anything else, not ever.

But then his mother is dead, and his father falls apart, and then his father is dead too, and the whole world is in pieces around him. A blanket around his shoulders. The emergency crews fluttering like moths in the flashing lights. His father’s blood on his shoes.

Robin breathes, slowly, like they told him to. His mother told him that the police are on his side. He remembers that much. They will protect him, even if they couldn’t protect his father.  And maybe, if he is very lucky, maybe they will help him to get revenge. Two officers are walking past, talking quietly. Robin has always been good at listening. He knows he shouldn’t, that it isn’t his business, but he is curious. He follows.

“Serves the poor dumb idiot right, getting in debt to Falcone,” the first cop shakes his head. “What was he thinking? Should have known better, him with a kid and all.”

The other one snorts. “They haven’t found a cure for stupid yet, else you wouldn’t be asking such dumb questions. Don’t complain. It makes a nice bonus in the pay packet, rounding up idiots like this one for the bosses to settle. If guys like this were smarter, you’d be poorer.”

“True enough. Just wish they’d been neater about the whole thing though. Kid shouldnt’ve seen it.”

“Quit whining. People will think you’re turning soft.”

The first cop laughs. “In this town? Not bloody likely.”

And they move away into the darkness, leaving behind a small boy with a blanket and a burning fury in his heart. His mother was wrong. The law cannot be trusted, and it won't help him get his revenge. He will have to take care of it by himself. It may take time, but that’s ok. Robin is good at details. He can be patient.

When Robin was young, he was happy. He remembers that much, later.

 

+++

 

The child changes everything.

It happens slowly, of course. The woman has a cell in the sunshine, locked so she and the child are safe within the confines of strong iron bars. He doesn’t care. The woman does not interest him. The child is an annoyance at first, always crying, screaming when he’s trying to sleep. 

Time passes. The child grows, and so does he. He is stronger now, no longer smallest, no longer the fool. He takes a new name, grows out of it, takes another one. He stops running from the fights. He is strong, and he is fast, and he learns with every loss. He no longer needs to hide in the shadows.

Time passes.

He is one of the strongest, now, and there is no one in the pit who dares to stand against him. They move aside as he passes, glance at him sidelong and whisper, speculate about whether or not he will try the climb again now that he is grown.

He does not. It is impossible. He will not try again.

One night, when the woman is sleeping, he goes to her cell and pushes his knife through the bars. He has no need of it any longer. The child stares at him, eyes wide in the darkness. “Why?” it asks him.

“Because I’m not the smallest anymore,” he tells it. He can feel its eyes boring into his back as he turns and slips away into the shadows.

After that, the child watches him. That’s only fair. He watches it, too, as it practices with the knife when its mother can’t see.

The child watches as he fights, and wins, and sits in the sunshine, and later he will see it trying to copy his movements, blade clutched tightly in one small hand. It gives him a strange sense of satisfaction, to be so mimicked.

Time passes. The child grows. He watches.

The doctor leaves the door unlocked.

The child tries to fight. He would have expected nothing less. But it is hopeless, was from the moment the doctor slid the key into his pocket and walked away. He cannot help the woman, but the child has been ignored so far, and he is fast.

It tries to stab him as he lifts it, and he has that strange sense of satisfaction again. He thinks it might be pride. He takes the blade and carries the child away from the light. There is no safety there anymore.

In a forgotten corner of overhanging rock and cold dirt, he puts the child down. It scrabbles away from him, keeping its back to the rock, eyes dark and angry. He sits down, takes out the knife, and runs his fingers over the familiar metal. It is smaller than he remembers.

“That’s mine.” The child is watching him.

“I know.” He holds the blade out, waits a moment, tosses it gently. The child catches it easily. He is pleased.

The child tucks the blade out of sight. “You gave it to me. Before.” It’s not a question.

He nods. “I did.”

“You saved me. Not my mother.”

He leans his head back against the cool stone and closes his eyes. “Your mother was dead the moment the doctor forgot to lock the door.”

“You saved me.” A pause. “Why?”

He turns to look at the child, takes in the awkward bundle of thin limbs, filthy cloth, furious eyes, and wonders the same thing. There’s only really one answer. “Because I was the smallest too, once.”

After that, no one says anything for a long time.

 

+++

 

When John is old enough to leave the orphanage, the betting is evenly split between him becoming a criminal, and him becoming a cop. He keeps a tally of it in the notebook tucked in his pocket, even though he’s not meant to know about it.

The reasoning for the first side runs thus: John always knows everything and is too curious for his own good, plus he’s a scary motherfucker if you mess with him. He’ll probably end up running half the criminal operations in Gotham by the time he’s thirty.

John thinks this is ridiculous. He would’ve managed at least seventy–five percent by the time he was twenty-one, no sweat.

The reasoning for the other side is slightly better: John’s parents were killed by crooks, and he’s never hurt anyone who wasn’t asking for it in a major way. He may be good at what he does, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to end up on the wrong side of the tracks.

John can appreciate this logic. He might even have agreed with it, if things had turned out differently.

As it stands, he pushes the rumours as far as he thinks they’ll go on both sides, eggs both sides on until the pool is larger than it has been in years, and then has a quiet word with one of his room-mates. The boy makes a new bet, and John walks away from the orphanage with a smile and pockets lined with cash. He walks away from Gotham with a quick backward glance over one shoulder, but no real regrets.

He joins the army, and for a while it almost feels like it could be home.

 

+++

 

He wakes up to find the child watching him.

“You were sleeping,” it tells him. “Without anyone to watch. There are no bars here. It isn’t safe. So I watched for you.”

He blinks. “Thank you.”

“What’s your name?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Why not?”

“Because I lost it.”

The child frowns. “How can you lose your name?”

“Anything can be lost down here.”

“My name is Talia.” It raises its chin – no. She raises her chin. He wonders how he could have missed it before. Suddenly, things are much clearer. And much more complicated.

Talia is watching him, shadowed eyes weighing his every move. She might see the flicker in his face, or she might not. Even if she does, she may not know what it means.

“I am going to sleep now,” she tells him. “Will you watch for me?”

He nods. “I will.”

“If you are still here in the morning,” she says, and he hears what goes unsaid: _if I am still here in the morning._ “If you are still here, I will give you a new name.”

And maybe it is that offer of a name, a purpose, a reason to continue on in this hellish existence; or maybe it is the cold evaluation in her eyes,  the strength of will, unexpected in a child so young; or maybe he has just had a surfeit of death. He leans back against the rock and watches as she falls away into sleep.

After that, everything changes.

He uses the guilt the doctor feels over what happened to the woman to keep them fed and comfortable. Some nights, they even have a fire: an embarrassment of riches. He teaches Talia how to use the knife, the best places to hit in order to keep a man down as long as possible, how to watch quietly and read someone from the most subtle of body movements. He sets challenges for her, makes them into games, and she laughs like sunshine when she wins.

He teaches her how to cloak herself in shadows, and they practice by playing hide and seek.

He shares the words he learned from the old men with her, and she drinks them in like a flower that has been waiting its whole life for the rain. After their first lesson, she gives him a name: Saheb. Friend.

He teaches her about the world above the pit, and she sits and listens, wide-eyed with awe at the wonders that exist in the world beyond the darkness. He’s not sure if she believes him, but she loves to listen anyway. Sometimes, at night, she will ask for a favourite story. “Tell me about the ocean.” Or rather, “Raconte-moi une histoire, de l’océan,” because she has decided that French is her favourite language. And he will remember the way salt air tastes, and he will talk, in any number of languages or in their own private mix of tongues, and she will curl into his embrace, trust in every line of her tiny body as she softens into sleeps.

The watching darkness keeps its distance.

There are fights, of course, tests again and again to see whether he can keep what he claimed. He has never claimed anything before, not like this. There was never any need.

There is need now. He wins.

He thought he knew what he was doing, saving the child. But as Talia turns and smiles at him with happiness sparkling in her bright eyes, Saheb was glad he had no idea. If he had, he would never have saved her.

That would have been his undoing.

Now, Saheb loves her devotedly and completely. He has no other choice. He will do everything she asks of him, be anything she wants him to be. And in return, he has a meaning, a purpose, a hope that is more than poison.

He makes up a new game: how far can she jump? They play it every day.

 

+++

 

John does well in the army. He’s used to hardship, used to long hours and repetitive work. He doesn’t mind that it’s dull – well, no, that’s a lie. But he puts up with it, channels his frustration into his work and fights harder, climbs faster, shoots better. It works. The fire in his bones burns brighter with frustration as the fuel to drive him, and he commits himself wholeheartedly to the inferno.

His performance impresses someone, and he ends up in Special Ops. Life gets more interesting. He gets placed in a team, and they fight each other like rabid wolves until they get pointed at a foe, and then they fight together like something much worse. John loves it. It reminds him of home.

They get shipped out to somewhere hot and dry, teasing and joking and grappling with each other as they carry out the mission. It’s important work, John knows, though he doesn’t know the details. He likes knowing he’s making a difference, feels a rush of pride as the deadly rough-and-tumble that is his squad succeeds, once, twice, three times, and then another for good measure.

The final mission is the one that goes to hell. Turns out the higher-ups had been tight-fisted with the intel, kept back things they shouldn’t, and John’s squad pays for it. He’s the only one to get out alive.

He gets back the States, takes a week’s leave, washes the sand from his hair, and gets quietly and miserably drunk in a Vegas bar. He doesn’t remember much of what happens after that, but he wakes up a few days later with a foul taste in his mouth, some interesting bruises littered over his body, and a loaded red die tucked into his pocket.

When he reports back, they tell him he’s been tapped for a special program. New, top secret, only the best agents chosen. He’s too tired to complain.

 

+++

 

The plague takes both of them by surprise. Talia because she did not know such a thing was possible, Saheb because plague-carriers were always killed quickly. The doctor was stringent in this duty: identifying those who were a danger to the other prisoners and having them eliminated. Sometimes, the bodies would even be burned.

This time, it spreads too fast to be contained. The stench of fear and death is stronger than it has ever been before. Talia hides behind him as he does his best to keep them concealed in the darkness, out of the way of the furious rampaging mob. Prisoners are killed at the slightest hint of illness, at the least suspicion of being somehow out of the ordinary.

Saheb keeps Talia hidden as best he can. If the mob turns on them, he knows there will be nothing he can do to stop them.

He is successful at first.

It does not last.

He fights with all the strength his love can give, and he gets her to the bottom of the climb. He can only hope it will be enough. She rises. He watches, and smiles as the mob pulls him down.

She is free.

It was worth it.

He is free to die now.

 

+++

 

It’s taken too long.

Talia knows it. It thrums in her bones as her father’s men scramble around the hole that used to hold the whole world, a deep, aching certainty that she should have been faster, somehow.  She’s too late.

Her father clips himself to the harness and tells her to wait on the surface, where it’s safe, where she can’t get hurt. She doesn’t laugh in his face, but only because she’s too busy fastening her own harness. He glares, but doesn’t force the issue. A wise decision – she knows he doesn’t like to look weak in front of his men.

He does make her wait, though, as his soldiers go first, and she can feel seconds ticking by as they rappel down, feet clumsy and awkward on the roughness of the stone. Idly, she considers what would happen if she cut the ropes. They’d never get out. 

Shouts rise up from the darkness, the familiar echoing of fear and anger. This time, though, the inmates are outmatched and easily overpowered by the armed, trained, well-fed guards. 

It’s taking too long.

Talia’s had enough of waiting. Her father grabs for her, but she uses his own tricks to evade his grasp, carefully not thinking about the long hours she spent letting him teach her when they could have been making their way back here. In the end it had taken her threatening to leave, to return on her own and try her luck with a rope and a faithless prayer, to convince him.

The pit still smells like home.

She wasn’t expecting it to feel so familiar, especially after so long, but it still pulls at her in ways she can’t describe. The stairs are smaller than she remembers, but the cool heaviness in the air is the same, and the closeness of the walls is comforting after so long spent under the open sky. She runs one hand over the rough-hewn stone, can feel the memories singing under her softening calluses. The emptiness beside her gapes, the aching hole where he should be so much worse here, where he always, always was.

She has to find him.

Her father’s weight beside her is intended to be reassuring, but it just feels wrong. Especially down here. She can feel how tense he is, peering around with curiosity and what she knows must be fear, looking at the prison he so narrowly escaped, the hell where her mother died, the only world she'd known for almost all her life.

 In the end, it is her father that finds him first, tucked into a corner as other prisoners fight and die around them. Talia is beside him in an instant. Her protector’s eyes are still the same, but now they are glazed, dull with pain and sickness. His face is swathed in cloth, and oh. It’s taken too long.

She drops to her knees and curls herself into his side, tucks herself against him as she always did. Her hands trace helplessly over his shoulders, his arms, the back of his head, re-exploring once-familiar territory. She has to blink against the tears that burn her eyes as he flinches away, eyes wide and fearful.

“Oh, Saheb,” she whispers, slipping into their own amalgam of languages as her father frowns down at them. “It’s me, Saheb. It’s Talia. I’m here. I’ve come back for you, my friend. You’re safe now. We’re both safe. It’s alright. I've got you. I’ll protect you.”

He shudders under her touch, shudders and cannot stop, and she curls closer, keeps whispering reassurances as he sobs brokenly into her hair.

 

+++

 

He didn't die. The doctor is to blame, guilt driving his clumsy fingers, but Saheb cannot work up the energy to finish what the mob started.

Talia is safe, and he is content to sit and fade slowly, staring up and dreaming of the myriad lives she is free to have now. The thought makes him smile, even though it hurts. He knows they'll be spectacular.

Sometimes, at night, he pretends she is there, curled into his side and watching over him as he sleeps. He sleeps more soundly for the illusion, but waking up is always agony.

“Saheb,” she whispers, and he shudders away from the happiness her voice brings. Waking is painful enough already without compounding it with the soul-deep hurt of Talia's loss.

“I’m here, my friend,” she tells him, fingers gentle on his skin, breath warm in his ear, and oh, this is far worse than any torment his body could produce. He would far rather endure the loss of her again, would prefer the manifold despairs of loneliness and darkness and pain a thousand times over, if only he is still dreaming and she is not really here.

She should be free. He can imagine no pain more unbearable than her return to the pit.

He shudders as she wraps around him, as familiar as if she never left, tries to pull away from the agony of her soft skin and softer words. She smells different now, clean in a way that was never possible here, but his body remembers hers. She still fits against him just the same, even if her legs are longer now, her elbows pointier, and there are curves where there never were before.

Talia has come back. He gives in, lets her pull him close, and sobs his anguish into her new, beautiful hair until the pain pulls him back down into the restless dark.

 

+++

 

Ra’s al Ghul is a tall man, and he likes to think he is also a fair one. He looms comfortably over the bed, eyes cold as he watches the body of the monster in front of him. His medics tell him that they have done what they can. It is not much. His daughter is elsewhere, sleeping, and it is time for him to sever the last tie to her old life.

She belongs to him now, not the pit.

 “It is a kindness, you understand,” he tells the monster. “You have served your purpose. She is safe now.”

The monster wheezes, maybe trying to say something. Ra’s ignores it. This is for the best. He has seen the way she looks at this poor beast, seen the emotion in her eyes, and it is intolerable.

“I will protect her, I promise. She is in good hands. She will be safe.” He picks up the cup on the bedside table, pours water from the jug. “But your continued presence will only harm her further.” He takes the powder from the pocket of his coat, sprinkles it over the cup. “You have fulfilled your duty, and I will ever be grateful for it. But now your journey is complete, and you have earned your rest.”

He lifts the cup to the monster’s lips. “Drink, and rest. Your purpose is done.”

The monster stares at him, calm eyes in a ravaged face. It does not drink.

“Drink,” Ra’s commands. “Drink, and end your suffering.”

Again, the monster blinks. It does not pull away, but it does not drink.

Ra’s bends in further, tilts the cup until the water laps at where the monster’s mouth used to be. “Drink,” he whispers. “Drink and be free.”

“He is already free,” says a voice from behind him, and a line of fire pierces his back. He staggers in shock, drops the cup, gasping. Agony flares as Talia forces the blade deeper, leaning her weight against him. Her lips brush his ear. “He is free, and he is mine. You were a fool to think I would ever let him sleep unguarded.”

Ra’s cannot speak, can only gape in silent, pained shock as his daughter eases him down onto the poison-damp floor beside the monster’s bed. "What..."

"I have learned from your lessons, father: the blade has been treated with one of your own mixtures. Because you are my father, it is not fatal. Next time it will be."

The monster pushes itself to sit and Talia moves to stand by it, pulling it into her embrace and smoothing gentle hands over it's ruined face. “Come, my friend. We must leave this place.”

“Talia….” Ra’s gasps. “Talia, daughter –”

She turns hard eyes on him. “You are the one who forces me to choose between you. And I will _always_ choose him.”

Oh, the sweet agony in the monster’s face as it looks up at her. “Talia,” it wheezes, somehow dragging words from that destroyed mouth. “Your father speaks only the truth. I will go. You will be safe here. You should stay.”

Her lips press together, a tight line. “I left you once, and it cost you dearly. Never again.”

“But –”

“Never again, Saheb. Not ever!" Talia's voice is steel. "I have sworn it. I will never leave you behind again."

Ra's gropes for his own knife. Poison be damned, this cannot be allowed to happen. Talia steps on his hand, and the world goes white for a moment. Distantly, he hears the crunch of bones breaking. She doesn't look down.

"I am leaving now. You can come with me, or stay, but I am going."

The monster climbs slowly to its feet, stepping over Ra’s as his daughter takes it by the hand. Ra's tries to stand up, but the monster is quicker. It places a foot over his throat and he goes still. 

“I will protect her. I promise.” His own words are echoed back to him. Ra’s struggles briefly as the pressure on his neck increases, gasping desperately for breath, and then the world goes dark.

 


End file.
